Red (8 page)

“
You don’t think it
was?”

I thought of the farmer, shooting at what he
thought was a predator. “He didn’t see her for what she was.”

Elodie said nothing, but I could feel her
thumb lightly rubbing the back of my hand. I wondered if her hands
stroking through my fur would feel as nice.

“
What was she
like?”

Her words jolted me out of the alternate
reality where she might ever actually see me in fur. I jerked my
shoulders, restless as I tried to come up with the words. “Smart.
Beautiful.” I frowned. All true, but not the essence of her. “She
was a free spirit. Didn’t like being caged by society.” Neither did
I. “She had a temper, like I do. But she seldom lost it without
really good reason. She was a supreme champion for the underdog in
all situations. There was this one time when I was a kid when she
went to bat against the town council for a moose.” My lips curved
at the memory.

Elodie looked a bit perplexed at that. “A
moose?”

“
You really had to be
there, I guess. Anyway, she was . . . grounding. When the world was
nuts, she had this way of centering me. Dad too. Of making things
feel okay.” I looked down at our joined hands. “She was a lot like
you actually.”

She stumbled and stopped.

Well shit. Two steps forward, three steps
back.

But she didn’t pull away as I expected. When
I looked over in question, her face was tipped into the wind, her
gaze unfocused. At that moment, I’m not sure she even remembered I
was there.

As I watched, she tilted her head, angling
her nose more fully into the wind, and she sniffed in a decidedly
canine gesture.
What the hell?
Could she possibly be
scenting
something?

I turned my face into the wind to do exactly
that.

And I smelled Rich Phillips.

It made no sense. We were miles from where
I’d tracked him last night. And yeah, okay, I didn’t actually know
where he’d ended up because I’d been busy trying to find that other
wolf. What the hell was he doing so far from the original
trailhead?

Elodie’s expression was uncertain, as if she
wasn’t sure of her own reaction. Hell,
I
wasn’t certain I’d
actually seen her do what I thought she’d done. It was completely
insane and I was probably just engaging in wishful thinking. She
couldn’t possibly be . . . like me.

“
You okay?” I
asked.

She shook her head as if to clear it and
flashed an embarrassed smile. “Yeah. Woolgathering. Hearing you
talk about your mom makes me wonder about mine. Dad doesn’t talk
about her much, so other than the bad stuff or whatever they
reported in the papers following her death, she’s a blank. I don’t
know what she sounded like, or what her favorite foods were or what
kind of music she liked. All I really know is that I look like her.
And according to Dad, I’m starting to act like her, which scares
the shit out of him.”

“
That must be
hard.”

“
We have a weird
relationship.” Now she pulled away, releasing my hand and starting
to trudge up upwind in the direction of the scent.

It had to be a coincidence.

~*~

Elodie

I was losing my mind. There was no other
answer. We were miles away from the trailhead where Rich and Molly
had gone missing, so there was no way that I’d actually caught his
scent. And way to take a trip into Weirdsmoville by totally zoning
out while Sawyer told me about his mom. Yes, invite deep, personal
sharing and then ignore it as if you can’t be bothered to pay
attention.

The wind shifted and I caught the scent
again, jerking my head in that direction to get a better whiff. I
wouldn’t be sure except that Rich had been so in my face yesterday
that I couldn’t help but get the smell of him imprinted in my brain
if for no other reason than to be able to identify and avoid him
for self preservation in the future.

I searched the ground for the usual signs of
passage, something to corroborate the idea that they’d passed this
way. But there was nothing. Frustration simmered, and I wished I’d
been paired up with one of the handlers with a dog. Sawyer wasn’t
trained for this, and I couldn’t track them when there were no
physical signs.

The next trace scent proved me a liar.

Okay, so I could track them if I gave in and
tried to actually use my newly sensitive nose, but what would that
mean for me? Would intentional use accelerate the change? Could I
really risk that? This could be, probably
would
be my last
summer. Did I want to risk shortening that time on behalf of
arrogant, entitled Rich Phillips?

Unbidden, an image of Molly hiding behind
her curtain of hair sprang into my mind. She was a child. Innocent.
No matter what kind of an asshole her brother might be, she was out
there. Tired. Likely dehydrated. Hungry. Probably terrified.

The radio crackled at my waist, pulling me
out of my thoughts. “Elodie, do you copy? What is your
position?”

I tugged it off my belt. “I copy. Just a
sec.” I checked the compass and the topographical map and relayed
the coordinates back to base camp.

Eileen repeated them back to me, then asked,
“Any signs?

There was nothing I could officially report
back. Not yet anyway. “No. Have there been any alerts from the
other searchers?”

“
Bill Throckmorton’s Lucy
alerted to Rich in Sector Four, but the trail’s gone cold. It’s
looking like a vehicle may have been involved.” She paused. “There
were traces of blood on the scene. You and Sawyer stick close
together. Check in every ten minutes.”

“
Will do.” I dialed the
radio volume back down and looked over at Sawyer. His face was
grim.

“
Foul play,” he said. “Has
to be.”

“
Not necessarily,” I said,
running alternate scenarios through my head. “If someone came
across them and they were injured, they could have been a Good
Samaritan and taken them to the hospital or something.”

“
Then wouldn’t the hospital
have reported back? They’d be notified of the ongoing search,
right? That the police are looking. If Rich and Molly had turned up
that way, we’d have heard by now.”

He was right. I didn’t want to think about
what that meant. It was one thing if Rich and Molly had gotten lost
in the park. It was something else if someone had harmed them.

Screw it,
I thought. I was trained to
use every resource at my disposal. Now that included my nose. And I
had to face it, the change was probably coming anyway. At the very
least, maybe I could do something good with it before the end.

I spread out the topographical map and
studied it.

“
What are you looking for?”
asked Sawyer.

“
Vehicle access. The alert
came in from somewhere in this general area—” I tapped the areas in
Sector Four that had access roads. I had to tread carefully here.
There was no overt evidence to suggest that they were in our area.
“—that would mean there’s something of a limit to where someone
could take them, if they were inclined to move to some other area
in the park. The terrain severely limits vehicle access. I don’t
know why they’d do that except for privacy. But if they did,
there’s only a couple of access roads in this area. A couple miles
north. Here.” I pointed again. “If they came back into the park in
a vehicle and came through our sector, it has to be on one of
them.” It was a decent theory—at least based on all those episodes
of CSI I’d watched—and that was the general direction Rich’s scent
led.

“
You’re the boss,” said
Sawyer, grabbing my hand.

I looked down, frowning at how much I liked
the feel of his hand around mine.

“
We’re doing like she said
and sticking close,” he explained.

“
Not gonna argue with
that,” I told him.

“
Lead the way.”

I tried to remember what the trainers had
said in the two canine search and rescue classes I’d audited. There
was something about how scent travelled in a cone, very focused at
the source of the trail, and spreading out like a funnel from
there. The scent cone was affected by stuff like wind,
temperatures, barometric pressure, dust—every little thing changed
the edge of that cone and made it harder to track for dogs with a
less sensitive nose. Heat made scent rise, but humidity was
supposed to be good for enhancing scent. Certainly the early
morning damp on the ride in had been full of bright, clear scents.
So I just had to keep moving and find the center of the scent cone.
Then there should be other physical signs of his passage, like
tracks and disturbed vegetation. Those I had a lot more experience
following.

I looked up at Sawyer. “Keep your eyes
peeled for tracks, any snagged threads of fabric, anything that
might suggest people came through here.”

“
Got it.”

When I was sure he wasn’t looking at me, I
closed my eyes and took another deep inhale. The myriad of scents
were so tangled, so
many
that it almost made me dizzy with
sensory overload. It was the olfactory equivalent of stepping out
in the middle of rush hour traffic in down town Atlanta.
Focus
, I ordered myself. I inhaled again, tugging at the
thread I recognized as Rich and teasing it out from the others.
Angling my body, I steered us both in that direction.

My shoulder bumped companionably against
Sawyer’s arm as we moved. Last night’s suspicions seemed paranoid
and stupid now. Of course he wasn’t a stalker. He was a nice guy
with protective instincts a mile wide and maybe a little bit of an
anger management problem. That was it. I actually felt better
having him with me out here, which was weird because I was usually
perfectly at home in the woods. Dad had made sure of that.

I looked down at our joined hands and
frowned again. Dad would very much
not
approve of this. My
better judgment didn’t approve of this either, but I still wasn’t
pulling away.

Rich’s scent petered out, and I came to an
abrupt halt.

“
Damn it,” I muttered. I’d
been too busy thinking about Sawyer to keep my brain fully on the
search.

“
What’s wrong?” he
asked.

“
Nothing. Just stubbed my
toe.” I looked around as if getting my bearings and carefully
tested the air. No trace.

“
C’mon.” He tugged me up a
rise.

Frustration simmered. I was angry that I’d
let this thing with Sawyer, whatever the hell it was, distract me.
Lives were at stake.

Focus came easier this time. Inhale. Sift.
Exhale. Repeat. Sixty yards on, my pulse leapt as I caught Rich
again, stronger now. My eyes stayed glued to the ground, looking
for trampled vegetation or other signs of passage, my attention
fully zeroed in on what my nose and eyes were telling me.
Everything else was just noise.

The scent pulled me like a beacon, and I
started moving faster, until I was the one tugging Sawyer. He kept
up with the pace I set, letting me do my thing. If he thought it
was weird, he said nothing, and I was grateful for not having to
give an explanation because I couldn’t think of one.

The scent was so strong now there had to be
some kind of physical sign nearby. Urgency beat in my blood.
Close now.
I charged up the hill, Sawyer right with me. We
stumbled out onto the narrow access road, and I came to an abrupt
stop at the end of Sawyer’s arm. I nearly growled in annoyance at
the interruption of the hunt.

No,
I thought, startled.
No, not
the hunt. The search.

“
Where to next?” he
asked.

His voice sounded strange, somehow deeper
than usual, or more guttural, but I didn’t have time to analyze it.
I was distracted by a new and more terrifying scent.

Blood.

The world seemed to shrink down to that one
focal point. My jaw began to ache, and I realized it was because my
teeth were clenched to hold back the growl that wanted to roll out
of my throat.

A bolt of panic shot through me.

Sawyer squeezed my hand. “Elodie?”

Ruthlessly I shoved the panic back. I was
not going to wolf out. There were too many other signs, other
steps, and I hadn’t had them yet. It was just instinct, that was
all.

I had to find the source of that blood.

“
East,” I said. My voice
came out husky, but still sounded like me.

I followed the pull, my hand gripping
Sawyer’s as if my life depended on it. I prayed he didn’t ask what
was wrong because there was no way I could tell him. We moved up
the road a few dozen yards. The scent was all but screaming at me.
Without it, I don’t know that I’d have noticed the navy blue
threads snagged on a branch. As it was, I all but pounced on them,
tugging off my pack and pulling out a roll of bright orange
flagging tape.

“
What are you doing?” asked
Sawyer.

“
Marking the trail.” I
pointed to the threads. “Might be nothing—” It was definitely
something. “—but Rich was wearing a navy t-shirt
yesterday.”

I circled around from the snagged threads
until I found what I was looking for—drops of blood spattered in a
single boot print.

Sawyer came around and knelt beside me.

“
This isn’t Rich’s boot. He
was in flip flops yesterday, and his feet are bigger,” I said. My
mouth was dry. “If those threads belong to Rich’s shirt, he didn’t
come through here under his own steam.”

“
He wouldn’t have dripped
blood into his own print either,” said Sawyer.